M6.0 earthquake Alaska

This is just a middle aftershock of the previous M7.5.  Nothing to see here, folks.

Peaking Over the RIM

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Today is the second sunrise for RIM.  We all know what happened, they caught the 'Canadian Monopoly Disease'.  Our country is dominated by huge monopolies who have their fingers into government.  Once a company reaches this level, like Nortel and SNC Lavalin, there is no stopping them, until they collapse under their own bloat.  For companies that have a steady monopoly rent that collapse never happens, like Rogers, Bell and Hydro, since they can suck on that teat forever.

Only companies that have to compete on an international level head for the abattoir.  RIM's stuff was horrible the last few years.  The common theme with all the daughter's friends is "I hate my Blackberry!", but they are stuck on 3 year contracts.  Now RIM is coming out with something three times as expensive as the Nexus 4, and I wish them luck.

 Update:  That should be 'Peeking' over the rim, as in sunrise, but I made a pun-slip and I like it.  :)

Nexus 4 almost in stock again

I got mine for my son, so I'm happy, but here's the whole story in a nutshell.

Seems that when they thought up this whole idea, Google wanted a really low price, but they only had so many billions to throw at it (they were being cheap).  LG was a big loser in the smartphone wars, so they had this production line in the middle of nowhere that wasn't doing anything.  Thus, they were willing to live with a small margin just to keep the line going in case they were successful one day.

So, Google threw petty change at it, and reserved this pitiful line, thinking that they'd never sell much.  After all, they had Motorola for expensive phones.  LG was happy, since they cut off LTE, and it wouldn't cannibalize their top line, which was selling a bit.

Big Surprise!  A bajillion people wanted this phone, and they could only churn out a 100K a month, tweaking it to 200K if they didn't allow the workers to pee.  Google accused LG, and vice versa.

In order to boost production, Google has now had to move to a real line.  This probably means big money down the rabbit hole.  They need to boost to a million a month, and LG probably has to cut Optimus production, which was selling because the Nexus was so short.  Like I said, big money.

Now Google is about to open the doors again, and if they learned anything, they will have shiploads of them.  All heavily subsidized.  Get yours while they're hot!

*the above is a fantasy story, based on what I have put together on this.  Don't sue me!

Update:  It's back!  Ships soon.

The Kanamori Doughnut

Super Classic Paper

Ok, in the previous post I alluded to what happens when clusters stop.  I waited for 30 seconds and nobody asked the obvious question.  :(

So, I'll answer it anyway!  The Kanamori Doughnut was a big hit when I graduated.  It basically states that you have a cluster, then it stops, and you have an earthquake in the dead zone.  The paper was so famous that it set off Japan on a ruinous course of gov't-pushed earthquake prediction, ignoring soft soil, tsunamis, or nuclear plants.  They detached themselves from the world.

Seismologists used to be as chatty as +Chris Hadfield on the Internet.  Now, you have to pull teeth to get them to talk.  That's why I don't post any more on the Geoscience Community, since it should be a 'safe place' to bring out shy professionals.  I goad them too much!  In fact, I feel like I do at a party where I talk too much, too loudly, and my wife keeps poking me in the ribs!

So, this doughnut sparked a huge frenzy in earthquake patterns with everybody back-fitting patterns with no physics - sort of like Global Warming.  In the end it all came to tears as none of the patterns ever repeated.  But with all the seismologists withdrawing from the world we are open to new wacky theories! Obviously Alaska and the Caribbean are joined by an earthquake ley line, since, right now, everybody in Alaska wants to be on a sunny beach!

Really quiet in earthquake land

Wow, these are 7 day dots.  For the first time in x months, all the dots in main Alaska and the Caribbean are yellow.  Way too soon to tell if the clusters are dead, but I think this is weird.  Of course, we all know what happens when clusters stop.....  (yeah, and I'll win the lottery).  Anyway I just wrote this because I'm surrounded by snow and freezing rain, and it's no use trying to chip the ice because it'll be all gone in the next few hours.  :(

Update:  All back to normal now.

Linux - Animated gifs

On Google+ you really want to get in with the dancing cat crowd, so you make animated gifs.

This was on Youtube, so I used youtube-dl which is a standard Linux utility.  I then used Avidemux to cut the mp4 video, and save as a series of jpg's.  Then I did a 'mogrify -scale 640'  to cut it down to 640.  Then you use GIMP, and open the first jpg file, and you use 'save files as layers' for the others, and you can export to an animated gif.

This reminded me of whales breaching.

Texas M4.1 Injection Earthquake

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I think Jo Anna better secure her crystal!  They are still injecting here, and we can expect bigger earthquakes.  As you can see this is right on the Mega-Thrust, and they are mainlining the fault.

Any warming will not drown us

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Scientists analysing ancient ice samples say that the Greenland ice sheet withstood temperatures much higher than today's for many thousands of years during a period of global warming more than 120,000 years ago, losing just a quarter of its mass. It had been widely suggested - by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for instance - that any such warming would melt the entire sheet, leading to massive sea-level rises.

Another nail in the coffin of the global warming panic.  This Parrot is Dead!  On to the Global Cooling Panic.

I've come to believe that the world needs these panics, and the Panic-tists make a lot of money.  You can go through your history books on all of them.  The best ones have a common theme - you can't do anything about it, and "People are a Plague on the Earth".  These Romanticists believe that we'd all be better off without any people.  (modified to 'any people but them').  When this group is successful, they attempt to kill people by lower living standards.

All of this could have been handled rationally by putting a tax on fossil fuel burning that captures the obvious externalities such as pollution.  The micro-carbon from diesel will kill many more people than any warming.  We can see that in China.  Instead, most fossil fuels are heavily subsidized, since it is a political sop.  Tackling micro-carbon would also sufficiently handle any remote CO2 effects.  New technology would reduce the problem in a rational manner.  Instead, we forced the technology with a trillion dollar disaster.

That article shows that we have had lots of interglacial warming periods, followed by glaciations.  Nobody has a firm handle on the reasons.  We have mini cycles and major cycles.  I'm still of the opinion that 'The New Warm is Cold'.

LInux - XBMC and Zotac with Intel GPU

Endless problems with trying to use the GPU on this machine.  It is sooo cute and has 4 working Atom CPU's.  You'd think it could process 720p (it's maximum).  But not for a long while, when I read everything on this.  Main suggestions were to turn off all GPU support and give up on it.

Yeah!  I read something an installed all the 'libva' packages.  This is the Intel vaapi protocol which activates video playing for the GPU.  It worked!  Found out that XBMC does not have the i915 driver which is required for this N10 integrated graphics set.  Now I hope to get that GPU temperature up!

Update:  Turns out this sucker has a Realtek 8111 ethernet chip which doesn't play well with the Linux kernel.  It goes off and on, and that was a problem as well.  You can tell when it makes a difference that you use the network or the internal drive.  I got the Realtek Linux driver and followed this.  It is really important to blacklist the old driver and they don't say that on the instructions.

Global Cooling Panic

I went for a dog walk today, and I'm still freezing!  I have decided to start a new panic which will get me lots of money.  As we know, our global temperatures have been stuck at a plateau the last 20 years.

Now, we Canadians are very grumpy about the weather.  We can have a perfectly wonderful day, but someone will say "Yeah, but it'll rain tomorrow."  I've enjoyed our plateau, since it has given such nice summers at the cottage.  But you can look at this graph and see the temperatures are going down.  :(

Here's my new way to make money:  I make a film about how ice sheets are about to grind down New York City.  It's all due to CO2 getting into the upper atmosphere and radiating out all our precious heat.  This is actual physics, as opposed to the 'heat blanket' thing.  This new panic can restart carbon trading and ridiculous subsidies for food-fuel, solar, and wind.  Just because the last panic wasted about a trillion dollars doesn't mean we can't do it right this time!  :)

We Canadians will make out like bandits, selling cold weather stuff all over the world.  Who on the equator couldn't use a new snowsuit?  When this cycle turns up again, we'll sit on our docks, drinking cold beer, and saying "Who knew?".

M4.0 earthquake Virgin Islands

For the two big clusters, Alaska and here, I'm only interested in earthquakes that crack the 4 barrier.  This map shows the last 30 days.

Dallas M3.0 earthquake

The interesting thing here is how long earthquakes can rumble on after they stop injecting.  I have always thought there might be a possibility that the injection earthquakes can change the local permeability and tap into a new water source.

Hire a Sophist

Blog Reference

Middle son got his degree at Queens in Political Science.  And I can tell you right now that's pretty useless!  All our university graduates are struggling since the Bureaucracy is dying.  When I started with the old company, we sucked in a lot of general arts degree-people into administration.

So, he is following the New Path, which is taking a degree and then getting some certificates in something useful.  Some people are even cutting to 3 year BA's which is what I would recommend.

Daniel is learning all sorts of useful things now, mainly Public Relations and computer skills related to that.  Stuff like web design and Internet communications.  He does extensive internship work and helped a charity get a government grant.  Hire him, please!

Windsor Hum Gets Money

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This is quite amazing.  The Feds are opening their tight purse! Probably only a 2-bit operation, since I can't see the necessary funds really being available.  As well, the solution may involve lobbing cannon shot over the river, and I can't see that happening.

If I went after it, in the old days, with my infinite 'old company' resources, I would budget it at 150K, with most of it being money to pay myself my ridiculous salary and pension.  I always had to cover myself with projects.  Realizing that it is harmonic noise, and thus immune to standard seismometers, I would work up some specialized arrays.  The real question is whether I would have to go borehole, and that would up the cost.

Obviously, we would have to do something over the river, and I would get a local university involved.  You can't expect any cooperation from the factories, since they are evil.  :)  A factory less evil would want to prove its innocence.

That I why I'm too expensive to live.  :(   People just want to spend enough to make it look like they are doing something.  That was the old company for the last few years I was there, and the main reason I jumped.

Update:  Looking at the news, they got 10 months pay for 1 or 2 people, but just doing air-acoustic.  With the huge university overheads, that must be a few hundred K.

Update2:  OM frickin G!  It's only 60K for 2 years.  http://www.ourwindsor.ca/news-story/1492040--60-000-study-launched-to-investigate-windsor-hum-/

Hot Alaska Earthquake Action

I just like to keep my oar in, on the Alaska issue.  Today's update shows lots of slab action, and I can now say it definitely went up a notch after that last big earthquake.  Of interest is that some earthquakes are tickling the armpit, where we expect the next significant burp.  I was not expecting any foreshock activity there.

Update:  M4.2 just happened, on the north end of the band, depth 56 km.

Darlington on a Leash

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Poor guy, no chance!

The Ice Wine Cometh

Last year they had one day to pick the ice grapes.  They need 3 days of -10C or colder before they start picking.  Only the smallest vineyards made it.  Now it looks like we're going to have a week of -20 weather.  I had to pick up all the beer in the garage, and take it inside.  Now that hockey is here, we can't waste that stuff!  It's been a long time since we were that cold.  Will the trees explode?

Oklahoma City Earthquakes - A Three-peat

This is suddenly a lot of activity for a place where I thought they were smart enough to stop injecting, like Dallas.  It gives me the impression that they might have packed off the Precambrian, and continued to inject into the Cambrian sandstone, but everything is fractured now, or overloaded, and water still gets to the mega-thrust.  As usual, there is no information.  We wait for these things to get bigger, or die off.

Eastern Canada earthquake vanishes

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The news reports this Western Quebec M3.5, but it's not on the map.  Is it waiting for translation?

How can I make bold claims about earthquakes if people hide them?  For me, the OK M3.2 is more interesting because I can see its location, right under the city.  I feel sorry for my poor Canadians who can't afford to take earthquakes out from under the mattress.  They really are in bad shape.  :(

How do you buy a house near Hamilton?

As asked to little old me... and here is my answer.

It's sad but true, that nobody cares about earthquakes in this region.  Your seismic risk here is totally determined by foundation type.  Thus, totally safe on rock, and horrible on the drained swamps by the lake.  If it is a new house, then ask about the foundation.  Look around for excavations.  Ask people how tough it is to put in fence poles.  That sort of thing.  Best is if they had to blast for a basement.  :)

Alaska M5.4 earthquake - large aftershock

Consistent with the fault mechanics, this earthquake is pushing the edge of the existing fault rupture, down into the 'gap'.  This is a good, classic aftershock, smoothing out some of the rough edges.  We should expect a few more.

Deep M4.7 Alaska earthquake

As I thought would happen, I have noticed a fair amount of activity at the slab boundary, since that last big earthquake.

This is mainly notable for it's depth at 131 km.  We calmly await our next M7'ish earthquake in the armpit.  :)

M4.9 earthquake Virgin Islands

This is my second most interesting cluster after Alaska.  It had been going on for quite some time now with nothing over M3.  Today it broke that pattern with an M4.9.  But unlike Alaska I have no idea as to the mechanism, and whether it is likely to cough up something big.  Around the corner, further to the east we have simple slab subduction, and there have been big earthquakes there.  Further west is pure strike-slip, and we all know about Haiti.

Under this cluster we have a slab strike-slip.  Can it produce the land-forming M8 or M9?  I don't know, but a cluster should produce bigger and bigger quakes, until it decides to shut off, which could be any time.

Alaska slab earthquakes increase

So now I'm willing to go out on a limb.  I've been wrong lots of times, so it doesn't really matter, but it is an interesting exercise.  This last earthquake released a 'sticking point', and I predicted an increase in slab chatter.  I am now willing to declare this, with these last few earthquakes.

I going to say that all evidence points to slab pull here.  That means the oceanic slab is cold and sad, and wants to die.  So the deep part is pulling the rest.  It recycles and forms volcanoes.  Resisting that is the friction of the big active strike-slip fault, which tugs back.  The sticking points shear off with M7+ earthquakes.  I am looking for one more at the circle.

When that happens I expect an M9 along the whole strike-slip.  It will probably not produce a great deal of PGV under civilization, since there is a lot of weak oceanic crust.  No tsunami either.  It will set up the next great slab M9 in the next 50 years.

So, the proof of the pudding is my M7+ in the next year or so.  As with the others there will be no warning, since the fault is glass smooth, and it won't do much.  Such interesting things!

Communities get too bureaucratic for me

Communities (on g+) are blossoming and attracting every nut in the tree.  As such, they have to be rigidly compartmentalized, and insane people have to be booted out.  I agree with it totally, but I have booted myself out of many things when they went this way, including my old company and Wikipedia.  I guess I prefer the unrealistic model of an artists community, naturally protected by a moat with crocodiles.  :)  Although they would never invite me!

I started out with Usenet, and always used my exclusive technical knowledge to stay exclusive.  But the Internet cries out to include everybody and their dog.  I wish them luck.  I shall return to my blog and ignore the fact I never get any comments.  At least the referral spam loves me...

Update, something I put in g+

Creeping faults like to party

This is an article on fault mechanics, which I love with a passion.  It has been thought that a creeping segment is harmless because stress is continuously relieved.  But we don't  know the actual stress, and you can get dynamic friction if your kick it hard enough.  

http://phys.org/news/2013-01-japan-quake-alarm-fault-doctrine.html

New Madrid M2.6 earthquake

Unlike Alaska, you can joke all you want about this cluster of earthquakes, and not worry about being hoisted.  These are all the earthquakes over the last 6  months, and they form the exact pattern over the previous umpteen years since the Big Ones.

I just picked up on this earthquake, since I was hoping for a break in the pattern a while ago, namely extending the zone to Dyersburg.  And it looked like, if Arkansas continued massive injection, that we could get a New-New Madrid.  Alas, most of the immediately deadly injection has stopped, and we only have the long term effects of overflowing a thin Cambrian sandstone layer.  Who knows when that will do something?

Yeah for an old Galaxy S i9000!

So, the middle son gets the new Nexus 4, and I get his old GS.  It is the fate of us old guys, but I'm happy, since it is so much better than his previous old phone!  I had great hopes of rooting it, but none of the instructions worked, and you have to get the stuff from sleazy sites that want to load on a ton of adware.  I don't think old phones can take new upgrades.

Still, not too shabby if you can still get all the bells and whistles.  I got a great Jellybean keyboard designed for clumsy thumbs and poor eyesight.  My g+ can still check in and I can use Instant Upload.  Wow!  The kids are just using all the modern stuff for games anyway.  :)  For that I have my Nexus 7.

Alaska earthquakes fill in zone

Now, I just can't get more than 30 days plotted on a map without actually doing work.  However, a few of the old earthquakes show up.  The aftershock lengths are exactly the same.  We don't really expect that middle zone to fill with another M7.5 because after a few of these we expect the big M9 to rip the whole length.

Notice that I have been going on and on about the earthquake chatter that shows the slab is on the move. Yet this earthquake didn't have a speck of indication.  That is because it is 'glass smooth', as one would expect for a very active zone.  In my model of fault mechanics, the fault was under high stress with a very low critical displacement - dc.  As I've said, this was a 'bathtub quake' since it resembles your foot in the water on an old tub.  Very high friction while still, giving you a false sense of confidence.  One fraction of a mm of movement, and whoops!  There you go!  That's dynamic friction!

After this quake, I expect the chatter on the slab will increase, but that zone is still in a stress shadow from 1964.  I think our M9 strike-slip here will happen before the M9 there, but I wouldn't hold my breath.  Still, this 'Marching Earthquake' happened a lot sooner than I would expect, after the M7.7.  Perhaps some more M7+'s before the 9?

*Italian disclaimer - You will notice that 'real' seismologists don't touch all this action with a bargepole.  These things usually work to a different time scale than measly humans, so DON'T PANIC!

Alaska earthquake - M7.5

This popped off just up the tracks from the Queen Charlottes M7.7.  Things really are on the move.

Beautiful strike-slip motion.

Nexus 4 arrives

And it has the sparkly back, so all is right in the world.  Too bad they are producing at a rate a factor of ten below what they should be.

Oklahoma M3.7 earthquake

Just in time for a new Hollywood movie on fracking!  The earthquake injection scene has totally slacked off in recent months, as more people follow the Ohio Rules.  This earthquake might be a leftover, or those darn Okies are just stubborn

Update:  Ohio Rules call for no injection into the Precambrian and to stop if there are earthquakes.  Nevertheless, they don't know what they are doing, and I predict that the next big story will be the over-injection of the Cambrian sandstone layer.